


Federal Pie Inspectors

by amelia



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Pushing Daisies, Torchwood
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amelia/pseuds/amelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The facts were these: At this very moment, Ned the Pie Maker, owner of a small pie shop and a gift that allowed him to bring the dead back to life, was about to meet one immortal Captain Jack Harkness. (Crossover with Doctor Who/Pushing Daisies).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Federal Pie Inspectors

At this very moment, the last of the Time Lords and his immortal companion were landing their time machine in a dirty alley across from the Pie Hole, while inside, Ned the Pie Maker was busily baking pies. 

The facts were these: After restoring peace and order in a banana grove in a distant galaxy, the Doctor was craving all manner of bananas, in particular the super-saccharine Earth delicacy known as banana crème pie, which was a rarity in other parts of the universe. Besides his urgent need for more banana-infused calories, the Doctor had found odd readings that wavered between fixed and fluid points in time at these spatiotemporal coordinates, and he wanted to investigate.

Conveniently, he neglected to inform his fixed-point Factual friend of this detail, instead deciding that the less Jack knew of this, the better, at least until certain other facts presented themselves.

Jack spoke first, leaning on the Tardis and waiting for the narrator to finish his rambling introduction. “Nothing quite so American as pie,” he said amiably.

“You’re not even American.” Raising an eyebrow, the Doctor pushed himself off the wall and began ambling toward the pie establishment.

“But really, the Pie Hole?” Following him across the street, and leaning over to leer at a well-dressed woman walking by, Jack continued, “Where you put your pie in your hole--”

“Stop it.” The Doctor’s sharp tone cut through the air between them, but Jack was used to such rebukes from his Doctor—in fact, he found them oddly affectionate.

“I didn’t even—" he answered.

“I know,” said the Doctor, as they stepped in the pie-shaped shade of the Pie Hole’s awning. “You really didn’t have to."

“Doctor, I didn’t expect _you_ to go there—“

The bell clinked in the door, cutting off Jack’s sentence, and the Doctor began gushing how he loved a little pie shop. 

At that moment, a short and perky waitress in a polka-dot dress came around the counter. “Well hello,” she said. “What can I get you boys?” 

“Well,” the Doctor said, eyeing her. Really he was caught off guard by her cute, blond….well.

Olive Snook recognized that look. This spiky-haired, skinny fellow had the same shy, nervous energy that Ned the Pie Maker did. His interest even looked a little peaked like warm, rising pie crust. Besides that, he was well-dressed, in a sharp, pin-striped suit that matched one of her favorite dresses she’d never had occasion to wear.

“Well, just let me know when you’re ready.” Feigning indifference, she leaned on the counter and looked her new customers up and down. 

Olive had already decided the pin-striped fellow was just her cup of tea, but then again the fellow’s friend was also a real looker. Ignoring the historical-re-enactment coat that reminded her a bit too much of a war hero uncle of hers, she drew her gaze across his jowly jaw, pearly grin, and baby blue eyes, and decided his face more than made up for his odd outfit. 

“What about for you, Mister?” she asked Jack.

“I’m just dying for a slice of down-home apple pie,” he answered. “And banana crème for my friend.” His voice was so very strong and commanding that it gave her warm shivers. She found herself grinning and staring at him for just a minute longer than she should have. 

The fellow raised his eyebrows, smiling back at her. “You do have banana-crème, don’t you?”

“Right,” Olive answered, shaking herself. “Apple and banana crème, coming right up.” 

“I’m Captain Jack Harkness, by the way,” he grinned, but his friend elbowed him. 

Olive couldn’t stop herself from giggling. “I’m Olive Snook. Nice to meet you fellows. You from out of town?”

“Yeah. Heard great things about your pie, so we made time to stop by.”

“Well, shucks. We do have the best pie around. Take a seat, and I’ll bring it right on out to you.” 

Olive delivered the pie to their table with complimentary coffee and enough whipped cream to fill the Tardis kitchen sink. Finally the Doctor glared at the two of them long enough for Olive to buzz off and leave them alone.

“You didn’t have to be rude. She’s just being friendly,” Jack hissed after she left the table.

“Friendly like a puppy looking to bury its face in a pie,” the Doctor muttered, stirring whipped cream into his coffee.

“Hmm!” Jack said, wiggling his eyebrows. “I’m not sure I’d mind. Cute, isn’t she? You like blondes.”

Turning on his Oncoming Storm face, the Doctor mixed the cream in his coffee with three teaspoons of sugar. “We’re here to investigate, Jack, not lick up all the waitress’ whipped cream.”

Jack hid his grin in a bite of pie. But one taste and he grimaced, nearly spitting it out. The apples were way past their prime. They tasted rotten. 

He looked up, but the Doctor hadn’t noticed him choking on the fruit. In fact, the Doctor’s long eyelashes were fluttering in unabashed banana bliss. “Oh, that’s lovely,” he smiled, casting a look over toward the counter, where Olive was watching, with her mouth hanging slightly open. 

Jack pushed his plate across the table. “How do you like them apples? They’ve gone sour.” 

“You sure?” The Doctor leaned over and took a bite of Jack’s pie, and again, his eyes swirled around in pure pie passion. “It’s good,” he practically purred.

Jack frowned. “Suppose I could have gotten one bad bite.” He stuck his fork back in the pie and, after glaring at it for a moment, took another taste. He nearly gagged, however, at the foul-tasting flavor. But he forced himself to swallow. Good thing his stomach was like steel and he could eat just about anything. He shook his head and found the Doctor watching him, curiously.

“Jack.” The Doctor leaned over the table and before Jack could react, he grasped Jack’s cheek in one palm, and joined their mouths. With a sweep of his tongue, he brushed away the flavor of rotten apples. 

Although he knew this was just the Doctor’s way of investigating the funny fruit phenomenon, Jack found the feel of their tongues twining to be shockingly sensual. He was literally being tasted by the Doctor. 

But after the Doctor’s lips left his, they puckered from a kiss into a grimace. Jack shrunk away, worried the Doctor felt repulsed by him.

“You’re right,” the Doctor said, picking up the creamer and sucking cream straight from it to soothe his mouth. Then he frowned. “You’re wrong.”

“Wrong?” 

“It’s you,” the Doctor murmured. “A chemical reaction between the factness of you, and the fixed fluidity of the fruit.”

“Doctor?” Looking back at him, Jack noticed the Doctor was slightly flushed. 

Without looking at Jack again, the Doctor picked up his fork and continued eating his pie. As he sucked down his banana crème, Jack wondered if he was exaggerating those luscious looks of enjoyment. 

When he’d swallowed the last bite, he looked back at Jack. “Let’s try this again.”

Leaning forward, the Doctor licked his lips, and Jack could feel his own eyebrows hit the ceiling as he registered that the Doctor was about to dip deep in his mouth again. The Doctor’s eyes were wide open as he licked around Jack’s mouth, and then dunked his tongue inside. His pupils dilated as he dabbed Jack’s tongue with his own, and then drifted away. 

“Don’t ask me why, or how, but this is due to your condition.” The Doctor settled back in his chair, his eyes wide.

“Is that what we’re calling it now—my condition?” Jack pushed his plate away and met the Doctor’s eyes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you just had your tongue all over my pie hole. And you liked it.”

The Doctor blanched, but his mouth quirked in amusement. His eyes flickered back toward the counter, but he looked away. As he stared down, puzzling over the plates of pie, Jack could still see the fuschia flush to his cheeks had darkened a dusky crimson.

“I think we need to have another chat with your friend Olive.” The Doctor said. “In just a minute here.” As he looked out the window, apparently lost in thought, Jack wondered what they’d say to the waitress.

When the Doctor stood up, Jack followed him back to the counter. Only this time, Jack was the tongue-tied one. He could still taste the Doctor and it made him want to retreat back to the Tardis and forget they’d come to this odd pie place.

Showing his psychic paper, the Doctor smiled at Olive. “Lovely pie. Just going to need a look in the kitchen. We’re Federal Pie Inspectors for the CIA.”

“Federal Pie Inspectors?” Olive answered with a suspicious stare, her eyes darting between them. “A moment ago I could have sworn you were busy inspecting each other, not the pie. That’s some tongue you’ve got there.” 

“Well, we’re inspecting the chemical reactions of pie on human saliva.”

“I see. Covering all your bases?” She winked at Jack, then raised her voice. “Ned! Are you expecting any inspectors?”

"No," stammered a voice from the kitchen, and out came the man covered in flour--even his hair had flour in it, which Jack found rather adorable. “Inspectors? From the Health Department?” Ned asked.

“You ever heard of Federal Pie Inspectors?” Olive’s look darted between the Doctor and Jack more suspiciously now, and she’d crossed her arms. 

“Not really.” Ned wiped his floury hands on his apron and smiled at them uncertainly, reaching out for a handshake. “I’m the owner, the pie maker. Nice to meet you.”

“And you,” returned the Doctor, shaking his hand.

As Jack reached out his hand to the pie maker, he felt some type of electrical current flash between them. The Captain clutched his chest, struggling to breathe, and then his heart stopped and he collapsed against the counter.

The Doctor lurched forward to him, and lowered him to the floor so that he didn’t fall. “Jack? Captain?” he called.

The pie maker had pulled away rather quickly with a startled look, as if he wanted to melt into the wall. “Oh, great,” Ned said. “Just great. He hasn’t been dead before, has he?”

“What are you on about?” Olive asked, as she bent over Jack’s dead body. Even in death, she thought, he was mighty handsome, and she stroked a line across his cheek and bent to touch her lips to his. “I think you’re supposed to give mouth to mouth in situations like these.”

The Doctor stood up as Olive lowered herself over Jack Harkness. "Believe me, that won't help. In fact,” said the Doctor, “he’s frequently been dead before. Do you mind my asking, how you knew that?” 

The Doctor pulled his glowing screwdriver from his front pocket and started to scan the pie maker. 

“Hold on,” Olive pulled away from Jack and looked up at the two men hovering above her. “What do you mean, he’s been dead before?” 

“Olive, I think it’s best if you maybe take the evening off,” Ned advised her, his face twitching slightly. “We’re out of cherries anyway and there’s only one slice of blueberry left. No reason to stay open at all. Have a good night. Here’s your purse.”

The Doctor moved to pull Olive off of Jack’s body and she backed away behind the counter, absent-mindedly taking her oversized bag from Ned’s hands. 

As the moments went by, the Doctor honestly wondered if Jack might not revive. Something very strange was going on with fixed points at this particular pie fixture. And although it was probably better for the universe if Jack turned from an undying fact to a fleeting ephemera, the Doctor had to admit he was rather fond of Jack’s own, well, Jackness.

(Hark! A Jackness, thought the Doctor. But his word games were beside the point, and anyway he wondered, was the Captain still full of Jackness? Being someone who’d lost all his people and any religion he might once have had, the Doctor found himself making up his own small prayer--Harkness to ashes, and Jack to dust, he thought—but then he stilled his thoughts and leaned over his friend.)

The Doctor slapped Jack’s face, peeled back an eyelid, and then leaned forward and kissed the man himself. As he did so he felt Jack gasp back to life underneath him, and saw Jack’s blues wide and staring at him. “Thank you,” came the hoarse voice, as Jack’s fingers clutched at the Doctor’s long coat. The Doctor helped him rise. 

“You!” Jack said, pointing at Ned distrustfully, and leaning on the Doctor as he stood up. “It was you.”

“Go on, Olive,” Ned said, still trying to shoo his waitress away. “Go on home. I’ll have to take some time and show these federal inspectors around.”

“But he was dead.” Olive’s shrill voice echoed in the quiet shop, and she grabbed the nearest kitchen implement off the counter and waved it in front of her as if it would protect her. It happened to be a whisk, and she shook it once, and then tossed it aside. 

“Apparently not quite dead--he was just surprised, is all.” Ned said.

“That’s right,” the Doctor agreed. “He’s a big fan of the pie-maker’s. Just a fainting spell is all. Just a fainting fan.” 

“That’s me.” Jack grinned, and if Ned had been pulling away before, now he was positively shrinking away from Jack, who had regained his full stature, along with the sparkle in his white teeth. 

“All right. A fan. A fabulous, fainting fan,” said Olive. “And I’m dismissed so I’m just going to go home and start shovelling a hole on down to China for some dim sum. I’ll be back before breakfast.” She looked among the men, and determined they were paying absolutely no attention.

“Sounds good,” Ned said. “Go on then." After a minute her words sunk in to his befuddled brain and he turned around. "Wait. China?”

But the door was tinkling again and Olive was gone—she did cast one jealous, suspicious look back in the window as she left, but everyone had already turned back to look at the pie maker. 

“What are you?” the Doctor asked Ned, as he examined the readouts on his screwdriver.

“Come on in the kitchen,” Ned sighed. “I can show you.”

As Ned raised raspberries to ripeness, and then rendered them rotten again in front of their eyes, the Doctor’s face lit up like a child eating his first pie. “Look, you’ve the touch of death! Brilliant!"

"Now _that_ is wrong," Jack said. 

"Touch him again just to see what happens," the Doctor suggested.

"Oh, no you don't!" This time it was Jack's turn to try melting into the wall.


End file.
